So Many MHz, So Little Time...

If you've looked at memory for your system lately you've likely noticed a couple of things. First, memory prices have held steady for the past few months, but are still nearly double what they were a little over a year ago. Second, now that DDR3 has been a mature standard for years, there is a vast selection of RAM from many vendors, all with nearly identical specs. The standard has settled at 1600MHz for DDR3, and most desktop memory is programmed for this speed. Granted, many modules run at overclocked speeds, and there are some out there with pretty outlandish numbers, too - and it’s one of those kits that we take a look at today.

Hardly subtle, the Kingston HyperX 'Predator' dual channel kit for review today is clocked at a ridiculous 1066MHz OVER the 1600MHz standard. That's right, this is 2666MHz memory! It seems like such a big jump would have to provide increased system performance across the board, and that's exactly what we're going to find out.

We all want to get the most out of any component, and finding the best option at a given price is part of planning any new build or upgrade. While every core part is sold at a particular speed, and most can be overclocked, there are still some qualifying factors that make selecting the fastest part for your budget a little more complicated. Speed isn't based on MHz alone – as with processors, where it often comes down to number of cores, how many instructions per clock cycle a given CPU can churn out, etc.

In order to get the most out of Kingston's HyperX Predator 2.67GHz 8GB dual channel kit you need a serious processor, even high end Ivy Bridge processors cannot fully benefit from the entire available bandwidth. To that end Pro-Clockers used the SB-E Core i7 3930K which is more often utilized in quad channel but in this case is using high frequency dual channel DDR3. There is no question the memory is fast if you have a motherboard and CPU which allows memory to run at that frequency and Pro-Clockers testing implies that it is going as fast as it can stably at that particular XMP setting. There are other profiles available, with tighter timings which means this kit can be of use for someone looking for lower frequency memory at tighter timings that the default 11-13-13-26 @ 1T.

"Over the past few months we have had the pleasure of reviewing some very fast memory. We have seen some 1866MHz kits from the likes of Corsair, Crucial, G.Skill and Kingston. And the fastest up to this day has been a kit from G.Skill which was dialed in at 2400MHz by default. But today we are topping that with a new 2666MHz kit from Kingston. The HyperX Predator at 2666MHz boast timings at 11-13-13-26 and some pretty awesome heat spreaders."